Industry news

Over the past 10 years, the financial services sector has become more and more competitive, with many companies now fighting for that competitive edge. Today, a key part of this battle is the ability to launch innovative financial products that savvy investors will find appealing – and to do it very quickly.

Most financial institutions are actually set up to develop new and innovative products - they often just need to find the right development path to take the product to market. In fact, financial institutions can delegate the majority of the hard work involved in a new product launch and focus their efforts, instead, on creating a financial product that is in tune with the market and what customers want.

Even for an established provider, the cost of developing and launching a completely new product can be very high. An increasing number of banks are therefore working with outsourcers to develop, launch and administer a wide variety of new products, since companies that specialise in this area can reduce the time-to-market for these products dramatically, and yet still meet the demanding standards that the provider would expect from its inhouse development teams.

By using an outsourcer for third-party administration, financial services companies can also delegate the responsibility for time-consuming tasks such as customer communications, product distribution, marketing etc.

As such, third-party experts can mirror the activities that would usually be handled by the financial services industry in-house, including issues related to actuarial support, compliance, business administration and IT.

The key to making sure that outsourcing delivers the desired result is to view the relationship as a true partnership. When working with an outsourcer to launch a new financial product, financial services providers will need to begin with a few very basic questions: will this product appeal to our clients? How will this product fit with what the market expects from us? How can we make sure that it accurately reflects our brand? And will it meet our particular needs in terms of return on investment, risk and service quality?

As technology continues to develop, financial services providers will increasingly need to make sure that they have access to a robust technology platform that will enable them to offer and support any new products through multiple channels, whether that means via the internet, on mobile devices, an extranet site, through the post and/or by telephone. Access to this kind of technology will play an essential role not only when launching new products, but also in supporting them once they've been brought to market.

Before long, retailers, supermarkets and other new entrants to this market will be launching new financial products of their own, and will therefore be facing these same challenges. As companies outside the financial services sector begin developing and selling unique 'own-brand' mortgages and pension products, expert advice in these areas will be essential. Companies like these will therefore benefit greatly from working with outsourcers, since they may not have the in-house expertise required to bring these new products to market quickly.

Regardless of the type of company launching a new product, however, an outsourcing partner should be able to produce comprehensive technical specifications and delivery plans within very short time frames, using systems that are bespoke to the company's specific needs. Above all else, the real key to the successful launch of a new product will rely upon the outsourcer's unique expertise and strong understanding of the financial organisation's requirements and product concept – and that is the true power of partnerships.

BT, a leading global provider of communications and networked IT services, has announced it has secured a multi-million pound contract to provide the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) with a fully managed Multi Protocol Label Switching(MPLS) network. Specifically, BT will provide a Northern Ireland Wide Area Network (WAN) across PSNI’s sites for the next five years. This infrastructure will enable the PSNI's mission critical IT systems to be delivered across Northern Ireland at high speeds providing the flexibility needed for modern policing to deliver services and information when and where needed.

The fully managed MPLS network has been designed to provide the PSNI's business functions and operational team with a resilient, agile and flexible service to support its growth and deliver greater cost efficiencies, while enhancing the user experience. The network also provides the PSNI with a platform on which to build further cost-effective and converged ICT services.

The new BT infrastructure will support a number of applications for the PSNI including faster and efficient IT links to all police stations giving the end user a better experience; it will support video conferencing solutions for internal meetings and provide the platform for cloud services so that the organisation can upscale and downscale bandwidth capability according to policing resource requirements and ultimately future proof the network for the growing IT demands of a modern police force .

“The PSNI requires solutions and services that give them peace of mind both in terms of delivering value as well as ensuring high quality of service,” said Peter Russell, Head of Public Sector NI, BT. “BT has worked closely with the PSNI to understand their business requirements so that we can offer them a solution that makes it easier and more cost effective to manage their communications in this fast-paced environment. By managing their network needs, we enable them to continue to focus squarely on policing.”

IT Leader to Host Science-Based Mortality Assessment Tool as Cloud-Based Service

CSC has announced it has signed an alliance agreement with BioSignia, a privately held science and technology company located in Research Triangle Park, N.C., to offer North American life insurers and reinsurers Mortality Assessment Technology (MAT), a patented, science-based predictive underwriting tool developed by BioSignia. Under the agreement, CSC will host MAT as a secure cloud-based service, while BioSignia will continue to own, maintain and enhance the intellectual property.

Unisys NZ has won a three-year renewal of its longstanding IT services contract with the financial services cooperative PSIS.

The services delivered under the contract include ClearPath and ES7000 servers and other data centre hardware support, disaster recovery hosting and services, and security monitoring of PSIS’ internet banking channel.

In a statement from Unisys announcing the contract extension, Annette Natta, general manager of information services at PSIS, is quoted as saying: “At PSIS our customers are also our shareholders, so our aim is to provide consistent and reliable services that they can depend upon to protect their financial assets. We have worked closely with Unisys since 1967 to develop an IT infrastructure that combines flexibility and dependability to support that aim as the banking industry evolves and the economic environment in which we operate changes.”

The London borough of Bexley and Capita Local Government Services have agreed to extend and expand their existing partnership.

Under a new contract, worth £14m, the deal will run for three years before the original expiry date of June 2016, and the council's financial assessment team will transfer to Capita Local Government Services.

The service will join council tax and business rates administration, cashiering services and benefits administration in the contract. The financial assessments team is responsible for the administration of applications for assistance towards residential care costs and costs for care packages delivered to citizens in their homes. There are currently just over 3,700 active assessment cases in Bexley.

The pension scheme for 1.5 million civil servants in Britain is to be run by a new joint venture in the biggest "spin-out" of a government service under plans to devolve power.

Francis Maude, the cabinet office minister, will announce that handing My Civil Service Pension (MyCSP) to a mutual shows that the government is ending the days of a "binary choice" between central state provision of a service and outsourcing.

The new mutual, a professionally managed form of collective investments, will be a joint venture between MyCSP's 400 staff and a private sector partner. The mutual will take over the administration of pensions for most of Britain's civil servants. The government will continue to assume the liability for the pensions.

Maude will say: "Too often there's been a binary choice between the government providing a service itself, or outsourcing it to the private sector. These choices have historically been driven by a belief that services have to be controlled centrally – with a one-size-fits all approach that has left little room for innovation.

"We are looking for more innovative ways to structure services. We know that employees who have a stake in their business, or take ownership of it completely, have more power and motivation to improve the service they run. They can also benefit from partnerships with private or voluntary sector organisations which can bring in capital and expertise.

"For the private sector, which can no longer expect the generous margins of the past, tapping the talent of frontline staff to improve efficiency will be a priority. The state, too, can keep a stake so that taxpayers benefit from the rising value of an improved service.

"I'm impressed with entrepreneurial zeal of Phil Bartlett and his team at My Civil Service Pension. They are pioneering the mutual joint venture model, and the government is committed to ensuring they have they right support to succeed."

Phil Bartlett, chief executive of My Civil Service Pension, said: "At MyCSP we are proud to be the first pension administration service to pioneer an innovative mutual joint venture between the government, employees and a new private sector partner. By taking the opportunity to mutualise, we can better acknowledge our people and their expertise – and access valuable additional resources and expertise in the private sector. This new and innovative structure will give us the agility to exploit opportunities in the changing pension landscape and grow our business, and the taxpayer will benefit from the increased value of an improved and more efficient service."

Cognizant, a leading provider of consulting, technology, and business process outsourcing services, and Eagle Genomics Ltd., a bioinformatics software company specializing in genomic data management and integration, has announced they are working with the Pistoia Alliance, Inc., a nonprofit, precompetitive alliance of life science companies and vendors, as one of the groups engaged to develop a conceptual cloud-based platform to facilitate access to public and proprietary sources of gene sequence data.

The Pistoia Alliance’s sequence services working group aims to define and document an externally hosted service for securely storing and mining both proprietary derived gene/sequence information and public domain gene databases. This conceptual platform developed by Cognizant and Eagle Genomics, as part of this piloting stage, will enable working group companies to securely share their bioinformatics resources among simultaneous, registered users in a secure, encrypted environment, while leveraging the flexibility, scalability, and cost-efficiencies of a cloud-based Software as a Service (SaaS) platform. The future of collaboration and externalization within the life sciences industry will increasingly utilize hosted information services, and the Pistoia Alliance expects to run future pilots to further explore this business model involving a range of participants.

“This engagement supports the Pistoia Alliance’s goal to inspire different ways of thinking in the life sciences industry and effect real change to benefit all our organizations,” said Nick Lynch, President at Pistoia Alliance. “With the combined strengths of Cognizant and Eagle Genomics and the broader Pistoia community, we will build a platform to define standards in sequence services, while overcoming the challenges of disparate data and tools.”

Cognizant and Eagle Genomics will combine the best of their consulting, domain, technology, and business process expertise to effectively deliver the business solution. While Eagle Genomics will contribute specialized bioinformatics knowledge, Cognizant will manage the development of the platform, oversee testing and security validation, and help strengthen the initiative by managing relationships with existing and potential member organizations. The platform will deploy a secure and scalable installation of Ensembl, a software system and supporting database developed jointly by the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and the European Bioinformatics Institute to produce and maintain automatic annotation on selected eukaryotic genomes. The platform will deliver a Plasmapper and a gene alias service as part of the initial functional services.

HP Enterprise Services UK Limited has announced a new seven-year services agreement signed by National Grid plc, a utility company operating in the United Kingdom and northeastern United States.

With this agreement HP will provide a flexible, enterprise-wide service management solution to enable National Grid to manage its hybrid technology environment.

HP will establish a multisupplier governance model to deliver a service-management function that will provide a single point of accountability across all of National Grid’s technology and services suppliers. HP will integrate all aspects of the IT service management processes and tools across the National Grid ecosystem, with comprehensive management of service levels to the business requirements.

“Technology underpins all of our critical business processes and we need to use technology to operate more efficiently and provide our customers with outstanding customer service and reliability,” said David Lister, chief information officer, National Grid. “We’re working with HP to establish a service management hub to manage our multisupplier environment more effectively and to enable us to be more flexible and achieve our cost and service goals.”

HP will use a combination of its Enterprise Service Management processes and HP Software, including the implementation of HP Universal Configuration Management Database (UCMDB), HP Service Manager 7, and all the requisite policies and procedures. The agreement also includes dedicated Service Desk Services for approximately 30,000 National Grid employees in the United Kingdom and northeastern United States.

“Many CIOs are wrestling with the challenge of managing complex hybrid environments that include a combination of traditional as well as private and public cloud,” said Mike Nefkens, senior vice president and general manager, HP Enterprise Services, EMEA. “The HP team brings deep service management expertise and tools with proven operational excellence from managing some of the world’s most complex, multisourced environments helping National Grid compete effectively today and in the future.”

Compass Point Business Services, the shared services company established in August 2010 by East Lindsey District Council and South Holland District Council in Lincolnshire, has selected Capita Software Services to support the first step of its merged revenues and benefits operation. The software will create savings for the department of 20% annually. The five-year contract is worth over £700,000.

In addition, Capita Software Services has secured a five year contract worth £370,000 to provide an electronic document management solution to Compass Point Business Services. This will be delivered in partnership with information and workflow management solutions provider, IDOX.

The revenues and benefits application will enable the efficient processing of transactions to support the councils' drive to improve services to residents and businesses. The revenues and benefits information for each council will be stored in separate databases, but appears as a single set of information which can be accessed and updated. As a result, reporting and analysis can be provided for each local authority, while still allowing the councils to gain the efficiencies associated with a single solution. The software will also support self service, which will allow citizens and businesses to make payments for services, such as business rates or council tax, online.

Capita Software Services is also implementing its enterprise mobile working platform to support the councils' mobile working initiative. Initially this will enable revenues and benefits teams to conduct home or site visits, but it has the flexibility to support any business processes that need to be carried out in the field.

The electronic document management solution will be deployed across the revenues and benefits, HR, payroll and finance departments. It will store documents electronically on a central repository, which will increase Compass Point's speed of access to files, reduce the time spent retrieving documents and increase office floor space by reducing the reliance on paper.

"We are confident that our bold approach will allow us to continue to deliver excellent value for money to our residents," said Councillor Paul Przyszlak, chairman of the board, Compass Point. "Making the most out of Capita's software will go a long way towards helping to improve access to services for the local community."

"We expect to see more shared services arrangements forming as councils consider ways to improve efficiency, and software will play an important role in enabling their success," said Paul Millard, operations director, Capita Software Services. "The contracts with Compass Point demonstrate that, through our range of software and our strong partner network, we have the solutions in place to meet the needs of our customers."

The councils' decision to launch Compass Point Business Services is a testament to their commitment to meet the challenge of reducing costs, without impacting the quality of service to citizens. We are delighted to be supporting them in their initiative."

Outsourcing giant Capita has acquired the government and healthcare units of public sector consultancy Tribal for £15.9 million.

Capita said it will be able to offer “a comprehensive menu of services” to support GP commissioners following the acquisition.

Tribal’s health business includes services in clinical coding, health informatics, support for GP commissioners, disease management and estates and facilities planning. The health and government businesses had combined operating losses of £2.7 million last year.

Tribal, which has been in an offer period since 17 December 2010, said that following completion of the proposed sale, it will focus on its education and training businesses in the UK and internationally. The company will remain in an offer period.

Under the terms of the deal, Capita will pay £13.4 million in cash on completion with a further £2.5 million payable on the satisfaction of certain conditions.

Beverley Bryant, managing director of Capita’s health business, said: “The acquisition allows us to supplement our propositions in patient engagement, HR, payroll, finance, IT and estates services with more direct commissioning support services like invoice validation, health needs assessment and risk stratification.

“Our aim is to offer a comprehensive menu of services that cover the full range of functions that GP commissioners will be required to fulfil.”